drinking in finland - the other kind

[cimorene]

I can’t drink coffee, which is a real bummer because I love flavored coffee drinks, even like, cheap instant ones. If I lived in the US I’d just buy decaf International House mixes, but Finland is hardcore about coffee, like, even more so than they are about saunas and personal space and deadpan facial expressions in public, and it’s legit hard to get decaf coffee.

Like, not at the grocery store, you can buy instant decaf coffee, the gross kind, sure. But I asked for a decaf mocha at probably the 3rd-largest café in the downtown mall a couple of weeks ago and the lady was like, “Oh, all we have is this” - a jar of instant coffee powder just like you get at the corner shop. So needless to say, the decaf instant coffee beverages have not come here. If I want a decaf fancy coffee I have to go to a proper coffeeshop like (something other than Café Brahe).

I can’t even switch to chai lattes because I’m lactose intolerant and the instant stuff is never lactose-free (I mean I could if I wanted to actually cook the tea and spices in a pot of milk substitute on the stove, or if I bought an espresso machine to do the steaming).

So I’d mostly given up on all that and just occasionally, defeatedly, had a hot chocolate, but last night out of nowhere I just started craving one. Actually considering going downtown to get one, which is like a minimum of an hour round-trip once you count all the bus time.

Comments

[lilysea]

Finland is hardcore about coffee, like, even more so than they are about saunas and personal space and deadpan facial expressions in public, and it’s legit hard to get decaf coffee.

Every time I hear about how Finland <3s personal space, I want to move there.

Apart from the fact that cold aggravates my chronic pain, and that snow is not wheelchair-friendly.

The more I read about Finnish personality traits, the more I feel I am secretly Finnish. Not sure how that works when I am Australian with English/Scottish ancestors...

[cimorene]

It's easy to have these idle thoughts, but cultural tendencies of course aren't really the same as personal traits. Finland is introvert-friendly because compared to the US they've figuratively moved the mean and standard deviation in expected amount of personal space, and expected level of sociability, and the expected amount of emoting. But there's still a full bell curve of personal variability between Finnish introverts and extroverts. Thanks to the cultural modification of their behavior, they're less exhausting than anglo extroverts for this introvert, but they still have behaviors and expectations that are too sociable for my taste and the same lack of understanding (or anticipation) that introvert preferences could just as naturally exist.